


Time Machine

by Windian



Series: no rain in the desert [2]
Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Hand Jobs, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:50:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9107377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: "If you had a time machine, would you use it? And where would you go back to?"During his annual leave, Hubert returns to Lhant for the harvest festival. Asbel wishes things could go back to how they were as children. He loses badly at battleship. He accidentally witnesses his brother in a comprising position.As it turns out, his little brother's still afraid of thunderstorms.





	

For his annual military leave, Hubert came home for a few weeks in the spring that year. Asbel, who’d let his belongings explode over Hubert’s half of the room unchecked, quickly worked to turn back the tide of the battle.

It was strange, to see Hubert sat on his childhood bed with his suitcase, looking around the room he’d left behind when he was ten years old.

“You never thought about taking some of these things down, brother?” Hubert asked, nudging his head to the model boat strung from the ceiling; the games of battleship and scrabble stacked hastily in the corner; the old drawings, tacked to the walls.

“They’re yours. It didn’t feel right to move them,” Asbel said.

His brother gave him a strange look. “You were never this sentimental as a boy, you know.”

Asbel rubbed the bristly back of his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

In all honestly, it was a bit of a disappointment to Asbel that Hubert no longer has any interest in playing _battleship!_ With him. It was only with much cohesion that Asbel finally managed to drag Hubert into a game, only for his brother to sit there with his legs crossed, boredly taking all of Asbel’s pieces in a record of one minute, thirty seconds.

“I remembered you were good at this game, but—!” Asbel spluttered.

“I studied military and naval tactics for four years at the academy in Strahta,” Hubert said, as he cleared away the board, stacking the pieces carefully back into the box. “Because of that, I can’t say I have much interest in this kind of thing any more. To begin with, no half-decent tactician would ever use such maneuvers. The alignment of the starboard side of the ships is completely wrong—”

This lecture went on for some time, and ended with Hubert lambasting snakes and ladders as _impractical and unethical_. Asbel silently thanked his ancestors when Sophie knocked on the door to come calling for him.

He invited Hubert to the harvest festival, held in Lhant every year in the spring. _Because remember how we used to go apple bobbing, and Joby managed to get the whole thing in his mouth?_ Laid out over the bed, he excitedly recalled, _and how you ate that watermelon, and we all convinced you because you ate the pips you were going to grow a watermelon in your stomach?_

“Vividly,” said Hubert, wetting his thumb to turn the crisp page of his book. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m trying to read.”

As though he were laying breadcrumbs to the gingerbread house, Asbel dug out a few of Hubert’s old well-thumbed comics and left them on the table. But when Hubert came home his eyes swept right past them, and he tucked up into bed with a dry looking book about the history of naval ports.

Still, he didn’t give up.

He asked, “Hey Hubert, remember when we were kids and you got stuck up that apple tree? Oh, man!”

“How could I possibly forget?” Hubert said, voice dry it was parching.

He asked, “Or the time we all went to the dock to play and Suzette fell right in. That was crazy.”

Another flick of his thumb. “If you say so.”

“Or how about the time—”

“You seem to to be under the misapprehension that my memory is faulty, brother,” Hubert said, and Asbel’s mouth snapped shut.

*

“I just don’t get what his deal is,” Asbel complained, as he paced around by the rose bushes, where Sophie was knelt down in her overalls, hair tied in a knot on her head, pruning. “I figured this would be a great chance to catch up. But he’s being such a stiff. Like I know he still reads the sunscreen rangers comics, whether he wants to admit to or not—”

“Prickly.”

Sophie withdrew her thumb, a blossom of blood blooming on the tip.

He knelt down with her to inspect it. “You should wear your gardening gloves, Sophie. Go wash your hands, before it gets infected.”

She popped her thumb into her mouth. “Infected?”

“If you get hurt and you ignore it and don’t treat it, it can go bad.”

She withdraws her thumb from her mouth to look at it. “Is that what happened to Hubert?”

“Huh?”

She looked up Asbel, with her big clear eyes that always seemed to see much further than his own. “He’s still hurting, but he’s ignoring it.”

…Oh, thought Asbel.

After several moments, he stood, reaching out for Sophie’s hand. “C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up. And I know Frederic has a spare pair of gloves in the shed.”

 

*

 

For the first time in years, Asbel tidied his bedroom. He tidied away all the cluedo cards that had been under his bed for years and packed them back into their box. He gathered a bunch of old toys and put them together in a shoe box. The game of battleship went away, too.

But he didn’t have the heart to throw them away. “Sentimental,” Hubert had called him.

 _Maybe I am,_ he thought.

So he tucked them away at the back of their large wardrobe, stacking them at the bottom underneath the old clothes Lady Kerri had never thrown away— his old favourite jumper, and the ugly dress shirt he’d worn to his father’s birthday party when he was eight.

“Crap, I completely forgot all about this,” he said, thumbing the obnoxious ruffles. He swore he could still feel them chafing.

Digging through the musty-smelling clothes, he’d spotted something, pinned to the back wall of the wardrobe. Asbel had to step completely inside to see it, pushing his old favourite holey pair of shorts out of the way.

He couldn’t help but smile.

The paper pinned to the back wall read: _time mashine_. Hubert had amended it underneath with the correct spelling. It was covered in lots of glitter.

When they were kids, he and Hubert had built a time machine. They wanted to go back: Hubert to see the famous ship, the St. Maria, before it sunk beneath the ocean. Asbel, to see the founding of the order of the knights in Barona.

And they had, Asbel remembered. He and Hubert had spent hours hopping in and out of their wardrobe, visiting different places, fighting dragons and doing daring deeds, that their mother constantly complained they always smelled of mothballs. He and his brother had travelled all over the world, without even leaving the confines of their bedroom.

Asbel ran his hand down the back of the wardrobe, the memories warm and fond in his chest. Until now, he’d completely forgotten.

He heard the bedroom door open. Hubert was home. He opened his mouth to tell his brother what he’d found, until he remembered Sophie pricking her finger. _He’s still hurting, but he’s ignoring it_.

For Asbel, his childhood memories were something he relied upon, something to support him. In the knight academy, they were his foundation when everything else had crumbled away. But for Hubert, it was the opposite. His memories had been poisoned.

The door was only a quarter open. _H_ _e must not realise I’m in here,_ Asbel thought. His brother crossed the room, and picked up a copy of the sunscreen rangers Asbel had left invitingly on the table.

 _Knew it_ , thought Asbel, with a grin.

Probably, it was wrong to spy on his brother like this, but the situation was far too juicy to pass up.

Taking the comic with him, Asbel was surprised to see Hubert sit down on his bed, instead of Hubert’s own. Sitting on the edge, he began to flip through without a whole lot of interest. Then he set it aside, and pushing his hands back against the bedcovers, inclined his head back, eyes sliding closed.

Asbel had never seen Hubert to allow himself to look so vulnerable before. The stubborn line of his brow uncreased. The tension he held in his shoulders seemed to slip away. Asbel felt a bit guilty for spying. Not enough to look away, though.

He sat there for several minutes, long enough that Asbel found himself with a crick in his neck. The wardrobe had seemed huge when he was a child, but now their time machine was so small Asbel was barely avoiding knocking his head against the ceiling.

How long was Hubert going to sit there? This was getting boring, except to announce himself now would be sort of awkward.

Except that as soon as that thought faded away, Hubert ran a hand down his chest, and begun fondling himself through his trousers.

 _Well, shit,_ thought Asbel. _Now_ it was awkward.

 _I should stop this_ , he thought. _I should say something_. Yet somehow, as though he were witnessing a terrible accident, he couldn’t seem to look away.

All he could think was: _he’s doing this on my bed._

Another memory rose uncomfortably to the surface, breaking through the protective seal he must have placed there. How, when they were kids in their time machine, tired out from their adventures, they’d often play the _massage game_. Which had seemed innocent at the time, except Asbel realised now it essentially came down him and his brother touching each other.

With a hot flush of embarrassment rising up his face, Asbel remembered how much eager he’d been to play than Hubert often was.

Which probably explained why they played _time machine_ so often, and why the two of them always smelled of mothballs.

As it turned out, there was a good reason why some memories were repressed.

Asbel’s attention was drawn back when Hubert unbuckled his belt to retrieve his cock, stroking it in slow, even strokes, head back, pale long neck exposed.

Asbel covered his mouth, afraid Hubert would hear his heavy breathing. His trousers felt uncomfortably and alarmingly stiff.

As Hubert continued to pump his shaft, biting down on his lip to stifle himself, the only sound the slight rustling of his clothes, Asbel couldn’t help himself. He slipped his hand into his own waistband to grip his own cock, and began to stroke it to the same rhythm Hubert was stroking himself.

Images came to his mind, unbidden: his lips, kissing that long exposed neck. Pushing Hubert down into the bed covers, his body pressing hot and hard against him.

Asbel was so caught up in his fantasies that when Hubert came, it was with a shock. His brother’s whole body went rigid, his spine arching back, and he came, catching his excess with a tissue.

Hubert had been utterly silent throughout the encounter, but now his lips parted, and he murmured, “Asbel…”

The name sent a shockwave through him. He’d never heard Hubert speak his name with such ardour. The sound went straight through him to his cock. Suddenly, violently, Asbel came, making an awful sticky mess down his thighs, unable to stop himself when his hands were both clamped to his mouth to stop him from crying out.

Hubert went completely rigid at the muffled noise. The vulnerability was gone: he was stiff and alert. _Thank god_ , Asbel breathed, as his attention went straight to the door instead of the wardrobe. Hubert watched it for some seconds like a hawk, and then, when the coast seemed clear, he rose from the bed and began to clean himself up with the efficiency Asbel expected from him. He tucked the tissue into his hand and left, headed for the bathroom.

Asbel stayed in the wardrobe for several more minutes, willing his heart to stop beating so fast. It didn’t help.

 

*

 

“You’re still working, Asbel?”

Asbel hadn’t noticed the sky darkening, nor the eleth in his lamp crackling low. At his desk, head in his hands, he’d started up to see Sophie peering around the doorway, dressed in her flannel pyjamas.

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

Asbel shook his head, dredging up a smile. “S’ok. I’m not getting much work done, anyway. I can take a break.”

Sophie padded in, her pyjamas so long they dragged behind her. She slipped up onto the spare corner of Asbel’s desk.

“You look worried,” she told him. “Are you feeling sick? You didn’t eat all your curry at dinner. Lady Kerri says that only happens when you’re not feeling well.”

He pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Ah… I’m OK Sophie, I promise. I just have a lot on my mind.”

Sophie waited, clearly expecting an explanation.

“Well…” he drummed his fingernails on the desk. “I was wondering. If you had a time machine, would you use it? And where would you go back?”

“A time machine?” Sophie asked. “What’s that? One of Pascal’s things?”

“Heh. Pascal’s impressive, but I don’t know if she’s invented a time machine yet. It’s… um, like a machine that would let you travel back, or forward. Like to last tuesday, when we had the picnic. If you wanted to change something that happened.”

Sophie contemplated this. “What would you change, Asbel?”

 _Geez, everything_ , Asbel thought. Starting with what had happened earlier this afternoon, so he wasn’t in this situation right now, unable to work, unable to think, unable to do nothing but—

Forcibly, he applied to the brakes to this line of thinking.

“I’d try to stop my brother’s adoption, for the first thing. Dunno how. Guess I’d tell my folks I’d leave if they went through with it. Don’t know if that’d work, but… I would never have dragged everyone down to the Barona catacombs either. And I would have made sure I was in Lhant when Fendel attacked. But… what would you change, if you could, Sophie?”

Sophie thought about it, crinkling her brow. Then she said, “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asked.

“If I went back and made things different, we might not be able to sit here today like this, right? Lambda wouldn’t be with us. And we never would have met Pascal, or the Captain. Even if everything isn’t perfect, I like it like this. I wouldn’t want anything to change.”

“…Oh,” said Asbel.

Sophie slid off the end of the desk. Padded over to Asbel, and kissed him a goodnight kiss on the cheek.

“You should talk to Hubert,” she said, before she padded off for bed.

For a long time, Asbel sat, holding his cheek.

 _I wouldn’t want anything to change_.

When had his daughter got so much smarter than him?

 

*

“I’m ready to go when you are,” Hubert said, standing in the doorway as he adjusted his cuffs.

In the midst of tying his laces, Asbel was thrown for six. “Ready to go…?”

Hubert stared him down under his gaze, and Asbel fought the strong, reflexive urge to look away.

— _…His brother’s body arched back, his name falling from his lips…_ —

“Asbel, are you listening?” Hubert asked, folding his arms.

“Uh, yes?” he tried.

“Good. Then finish getting ready and we’ll go. Sophie’s waiting downstairs for us.”

“Um. Go where…?”

The look Hubert threw over his shoulder was of utter exasperation. “The harvest festival. I believe you invited me.”

“Wait… I thought you weren’t interested.”

“I never said that,” Hubert replied, before he approached Asbel on the bed, his voice softening. “Are you feeling unwell, Asbel? You’ve been acting oddly all day. And you barely spoke at lunch.” Hubert made an odd, jumpy movement with his arm, as though he was going to lay his hand against Asbel’s brow, but thought better of it.

“I’m fine,” Asbel said.

“You go to bed very late most evenings. Are you getting enough sleep? Your health is important, especially for a person with your responsibilities, brother.”

— _“Asbel…”_ _he’d gasped_ …—

The colour crept high up his neck. “So why does it bother you? I thought you’d be happy I finally left you alone.”

He hadn’t meant it like that, but his tongue twisted his words with a harsh vindictiveness he hadn’t intended. Shame coloured his face; he couldn’t even raise his head to look at Hubert. A moment later, he heard the tap of his brother’s heeled boots as he headed to the doorway. His voice was flat: “Sophie and I will be waiting downstairs.”

 

*

 

That evening they returned home from the festival, Asbel laden down with bags of cotton candy, candied apples and a bag with two live goldfish.

“It’s sad we couldn’t win the pig,” said Sophie, arms linked with the two brothers.

“It’s just as well, Sophie,” Hubert said. “He’d probably dig up your flowers.”

“He wouldn’t,” said Sophie. “I’d train him so he’d be a good boy.”

The evening hadn’t been as wearing as Asbel thought, with Sophie there as a buffer, easing some of the unspoken thoughts between them. And it’d been fun, taking part in the festival after all these years.

Both and Hubert had changed so irrevocably, and yet it was strange: the stone walls of Lhant still stood the same. Lord Windegarde still turned. Lord Aston was gone, and Asbel had stepped into his shoes, and the people of Lhant had accepted this without question. That his feet felt too small, like a child trotting around in his father’s best dinner shoes, was something Asbel did his best to swallow down.

He felt tired, but with the amount of sugar Sophie had imbibed, she was more awake than ever. She told him and Hubert, “I want to play a game.”

“Ah… what kind of game, Sophie?” Asbel said.

“Some children were telling me about it at the festival. They said one person hides, and the other people look for them…”

Hubert raised an eyebrow. “Hide and seek?”

She clapped her hands together. “Can we play it?”

Asbel expected Hubert to turn her down, and tell her he was too old for that sort of game. To his surprise, Hubert readily agreed. “Alright, Sophie. Do you want to hide first, or seek?”

“I’ll look for you both!” Sophie said. “What should I count to? Frederic taught me to count to ten thousand.”

Asbel couldn’t help but hook a smile. “How about just one hundred?”

So they went to go hide. Asbel crawled out under the wisteria bush in the garden, and waited for her to find him. The day had dawned a beautiful bright spring day, but at the festival things had clouded over. All of a sudden, now, it’d got very dark. Asbel just hoped it wouldn’t start raining while he was stuck under a bush.

Something tickled his foot.

“Found you, Asbel.”

Asbel sat up, picking a stick out of his hair. “That was fast, Sophie. Have you found Hubert yet?”

She shook her head. “Come help me look for him.”

But they couldn’t find Hubert anywhere.

He wasn’t under any of the beds, or in the airing closet. He wasn’t in the study, or the kitchen. They even checked the attic, sifting through the dust. Even then, they didn’t find him, though they did find Asbel’s old marble collection, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip.

“Did he come out into the garden with you, Asbel?” Sophie asked.

“I didn’t see him, but…”

They checked again, but once again Hubert was no where to be found.

And as they were checking the shed, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a rolling bolt of thunder.

A few seconds later, it started to rain, coming down fast and hard. A hand on Sophie’s back, Asbel shepherded her into the dry before they were both soaked through.

“My Lord… young Miss, please come into the dry,” said Frederic, standing in the doorway with a towel.

Sophie sneezed. Asbel grabbed the big fluffy towel and put it on top of her head. She smiled.

“Thanks Asbel, and Frederic.”

But she looked back out into the torrent, lit for an instant with another bolt of lightning. “But where’s Hubert? You don’t think he’s still outside, right?”

“I’m sure he’s fine.  He’ll probably give up hiding and come out soon.”

 

*

 

But Hubert didn’t give up and come out.

 

*

 

 _Figures_ , thought Asbel, tapping his dessert plate with spoon. _Just like Hubert to be so stubborn, even when it’s just for a kids’ game._

It’d been hours since their game, and the dinner the cook had made for Hubert had ended up going to their mother’s pet dog.

The windows lit up with lightning.

“We haven’t had a storm this bad in a long time,” Kerri said, looking out the window. Chin resting on the backs of wrists, her eyes seemed to look further. “I do hope Hubert is somewhere dry. He used to hate storms as a boy.”

Asbel’s eyes widened.

Sophie had been playing with Asbel’s marbles, rolling them about in her saucer. Now, she paused. “How come?”

“Well… I know you’re not afraid of anything, Sophie, but some children are afraid of storms.” She stifled her laughter with her hand. “In the mornings after a bad storm, I’d always come in to the boys room to find Hubert had snuck into Asbel’s bed, and found them curled up together.”

Asbel rubbed the back of his neck. “He used to wriggle in his sleep a lot, though.”

When they’d got a little older, Hubert had got shyer about asking to sleep with him. Asbel would hear Hubert sniffling, until he got fed up and crossed the room to tuck himself into Hubert’s bed with him, where his brother would cling to him like a limpet.

“If you were scared, why didn’t you just come tell me?” Asbel had said.

“Boys aren’t supposed to be scared of things like thunderstorms,” Hubert had sniffed, face pressed into Asbel’s pyjama top. “I was afraid you’d make fun of me.”

“Huh? I wouldn’t make fun of you, Hubert.”

“Liar,” accused Hubert, though the bite of the word was taken out by the fact that he had his face muffled up against Asbel’s chest. “I heard you talking to Joby and Tomas today. You said there was no point inviting me to go rock-climbing because I was a cry baby.”

Well… maybe he had said that, but, “I didn’t mean it,” he protested.

“So why did you say it?” Hubert demanded, into Asbel’s flannel pyjamas.

“Uh… I was just showing off, I guess.” In truth, Hubert did cry a lot. But… “There’s nothing wrong with being scared of stuff. I mean, there are things I’m scared of, and _I’m_ almost fearless, so it’s natural you’d be frightened.”

“You’re just saying that to try to make me feel better…”

Asbel pulled his arms around Hubert. “I’ll protect you, so don’t worry about anything.”

Eventually, Hubert acquiesced. His sniffling stopped, and finally, he fell asleep.

In truth, Asbel didn’t really mind if Hubert wriggled. And Hubert kind of was a cry baby, but that was OK too, because it meant that Asbel got to protect him.

He fell asleep, thinking of knights and horses and chivalry, and how when he finally became a knight, he’d be able to save Hubert from anything, and he’d never need to be scared again.

 

*

 

Pushing away his half finished pie, Asbel excused himself, and half ran up the stairs to his bedroom.

Lightning threw long white sails across the room.

“Hubert?” Asbel called.

There was no response, but a moment later, a soft rustling noise came from the wardrobe.

Asbel could have put his head in his hands. Of course.

He opened the wardrobe doors.

Hubert was hunched over, head between his knees, tufts of hair sticking up askew. With a sudden pang straight in his heart, Asbel wondered if Hubert was crying. But when his brother’s head snapped up, he saw Hubert’s eyes were dry. They bored into his, wide and rimmed, lips so bitten they were white, hands balled so tight his nails must be cutting into his skin.

“Hu—”

“Leave me alone, brother,” Hubert spat, with a surprising amount of viciousness for a man hiding inside a wardrobe from a thunderstorm.

“You’ve been in there for hours, Hubert,” Asbel said, dropping the concern to speak bluntly. “How long do you plan on keeping this up?”

“For as long as this blasted storm persists,” Hubert spat, before another bolt of lightning rocked Lhant, and Hubert flinched, knuckles tightening, a shadow of something fluttering behind his eyes.

He was trying, Asbel realised, very hard not to cry.

Wordlessly, Asbel sat beside Hubert in the wardrobe, pulling his knees up to him.

“Geez. It definitely feels a lot smaller in here than when we were kids,” he said.

“Why. Are. You. Here?” Hubert said, between his teeth.

“It’s no fun being alone when you’re scared.”

“Scared?” Hubert scoffed. “I’m not scared. I’m simply—” his words were caught up in a strangled noise as a thunder hit the house, so close off it must have struck somewhere in Lhant. He pressed his head in between in his knees.

“I thought you decided you were going to leave me alone, anyway,” Hubert said, the words muffled.

“Oh, um. I was just being dumb, Hubert. I’m sorry,” said Asbel. “You, um, still don’t like thunderstorms, huh?”

“Evidently.” Hubert’s voice was as dry and clipped as the Strahtan desert.

“Does Yu Liberte get a lot of thunderstorms?” Asbel asked.

“Thunderstorms are caused by the sharp difference in hot weather intersecting with cold. So yes, there are a lot of thunderstorms in the desert,” Hubert said, quite clinically.

“So, uh, what did you do whenever was one?”

Hubert didn’t reply. And Asbel realised he didn’t need to. He was witnessing the answer.

When they were kids, Hubert came to him whenever the thunder came. So what had he done without him, in a strange country, raised by a man as cold as Garett Oswell? (he couldn’t imagine Hubert crawling into Oswell’s bed for comfort, somehow).

He’d found somewhere to hide, and tried very hard not to cry.

Asbel pushed aside his own fears and concerns, and reached his arms around his brother, pulling him close.

“B-brother! What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Asbel asked. Did Hubert _really_ have to make this so hard all of the time? “You always came to me during thunderstorms when were kids, right?”

“We aren’t children any longer, brother!” Hubert protested, trying to struggle out of Asbel’s grip. But Asbel held on.

 _It’s true_ , Asbel thought. _We aren’t kids any longer. And things are different between us now, no matter how hard I keep trying to hold onto the past. Things can never go back to how they were, but…_

“What does it matter? It doesn’t matter how old we are. I’m still here for you, Hubert.”

“That’s the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever—” Hubert was interrupted by a bolt of thunder. Instinctively, he reached out to grip Asbel, burying his face in Asbel’s collarbone with a adorably flustered _squeak_.

Asbel grinned, and pulled his arms around Hubert tight. For all his bravado, his little brother was still so cute.

“This is humiliating…” Hubert muttered, into the material of Asbel’s coat.

Asbel rubbed comforting circles on the back of his brother’s back. “It’s fine, Hubert.”

“…You won’t tell anyone about this?” Hubert asked.

“It’s a promise.”

Hubert didn’t feel quite so tense, after that.

They sat there for a long time, listening to the rain pouring down, the sky darkening. When the lightning struck, Hubert shuddered against him. Underneath the thick bay of clouds, the sun must have been setting. Night began to settle. Asbel could hear Hubert’s heartbeat, slowly beginning to calm.

Eventually, the storm lessened. Hubert’s clinging fingers no longer clung so tightly.

Asbel thought about asking, “Why the wardrobe?” but the words caught on his tongue.

He didn’t need to ask. He wasn’t, after all, the only one who wished they could go back in time.

 

*

 

Hubert’s protests were weak when Asbel suggested they go back to his bed, and quickly dispelled.

“You don’t really want to spend the whole night in this cramped wardrobe, do you?” he asked.

There wasn’t much resistance after that. Hubert nodded against his chest. “Okay.”

Before he got into bed, Asbel unlaced his shoes and pulled off his jacket, reaching for his pyjamas pants. He looked over to the other side of the bed, where Hubert was setting his glasses on the nightstand. His brother met his gaze, something almost shy tucked into his tentative smile.

Asbel found his heart beating, fast.

“Come here,” he said, and pulled Hubert into his arms, his brother’s breath hot and hitched at his neck.

For all Hubert’s resistance, he was the one holding on the most fiercely.

Something else he’d forgotten, with everything else: another reason he hadn’t minded sharing his bed with his little brother. When the storm had burnt itself out, and Hubert’s shudders had stopped racking against him, Hubert would often want to play before they fell asleep. All terribly fumbling and innocent, and not at all like Hubert’s breath, hot and hard at his neck, heart hammering despite the storm that had blown itself out, the much more adult hardness Asbel could feel pressing between his legs.

The room was utterly dark, with a cool wind blowing, when Asbel tangled his legs around his brother’s. Cupped his cheek, pressing his lips to his.

There’s a moment of hesitation, and then Hubert moved with him, opening his mouth to allow Asbel access, fingers digging into his nightshirt.

When he pulled back, Hubert was panting, his cheeks stained red. “W-wait, brother,” he said.

Asbel’s confidence disappeared in a wisp. What was he doing? “S-Sorry, Hubert, I— I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” Hubert interrupted him. “I didn’t mean I don’t want…” his voice trailed off as Hubert bit down on his bottom lip. The action was so vulnerable, so indicative of the old Hubert he used to know that Asbel’s heart surged.

“You do?” Asbel asked.

Slowly, he nodded. “But… should we?”

Asbel understood what Hubert was saying: this seemed the kind of  precipice that once leapt from, would be hard to climb back to again.

“We can’t go back to the way we were,” said Asbel. “I… I thought we could try, but…”

The people they’d been were gone. Both of them.

They couldn’t go back: only forward.

“Let’s not do too much… at least,” Hubert said.

“Of course. Whatever you want,” said Asbel. And then, “Can I touch you? Just touching. I want to make you feel good.” He liked the sound of that: having Hubert in his hands, bringing him to pieces, watching him fall apart. He’d fantasised about that, watching Hubert from the wardrobe.

“I- I’d like that, brother,” Hubert said, and Asbel winced.

“Do you have to call me that?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to call you?” Hubert huffed.

“My name, maybe?” said Asbel, as he pushed Hubert onto his back. Hubert flushed, fingers curling around Asbel’s sleeves.

“Alright… Asbel.”

Asbel kissed him again. With less intensity this time, not so fumbling, slowly figuring out the way they connected. As they kissed Asbel reached down into Hubert’s pyjamas pants. When he gripped his hand around Hubert’s cock, his brother released a short sharp gasp into his mouth.

“Geez, Hubert. Does it feel that good? You’re hard already.”

Asbel hadn’t thought Hubert could go any redder than he was already, but once again, he was proven wrong.

“S-shut up, Asbel! Don’t tease me: just get on with it.”

“Alright, alright.” He gave several sharp pumps to the underside of Hubert’s cock. It was the kind of thing he liked, and as it turned out, so did Hubert, because he tensed up, eyes squeezed closed.

“How does that feel?” he asked.

“What do you think?” snapped Hubert.

“I’m just asking,” Asbel said. “How am I supposed to know otherwise?”

“Fine! It feels good.”

He’d been nervous at first, but this was turning into a ridiculous amount of fun. There was a certain thrill in it: holding Hubert like this, his brother literally in his hands. He stroked him harder, hoping to get some reaction out of him.

“C’mon, Hubert. You don’t have to be so stoic.”

“Do you really want the whole house to hear us?”

“Everyone’s in bed. The only one else upstairs is Mum, and she’s not going to hear across from the landing.”

“That’s not— ah!” Asbel clearly hit a sweet spot as Hubert’s hands flew to his mouth, to cover his gasp.

“I want to make you feel good, Hubert.” As he spoke, Asbel rocked himself against Hubert’s thigh, his own cock hot and damp.

“How can you— ah— say such brazen things?”

Even as he rocked against Hubert, Asbel flushed. “Uh. I just figured that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to say in this kind of situation.”

Even in the grip of pleasure, Asbel was certain he saw Hubert roll his eyes. “Ridiculous,” he said, before with one sharp pump Asbel had him crying aloud. “God, Asbel!”

It had been exciting enough, watching Hubert from the wardrobe. But seeing Hubert, up close, under his hands, falling to pieces was something else entirely. Hubert was bucking up into his hands eagerly, fingers twisted into the material of Asbel’s pyjama top.

And with no warning, he came, spurting over himself as he buried his face in the pillow with the most delicious sounding groan Asbel had ever heard. He captured it with a kiss, the sound going straight to his cock as Asbel made a few short abortive thrusts against Hubert’s thigh, before he was coming too.

He collapsed against Hubert’s chest, their hearts hammering together, sunning himself in the afterglow.

And then Hubert asked, “…Did you really just come on my leg?”

“Uh.” He’d gotten really into it, but now it was over it was kind of embarrassing. And sticky.

He felt Hubert press a startlingly tender kiss against his head. “Next time, let me do that for you.”

Asbel would protest, but he was too busy imagining _next time._


End file.
